David Dorward wrote:
> What's more - say a user is using a windowless browsing environment
> (such as lynx). Any such warning would be untrue as javascript and
> target attributes can't make new windows open.
Right. Moreover, one qua author cannot *know* what will happen when a
user follows a target=_blank link, even when the user's navigating
with a windowing browser, since no normative specification mandates
how a browser *must* behave upon its user activating a target=_blank
link [1]. In fact, the HTML4.01 specification expressly endorses
browsers providing "a mechanism to override the target attribute":
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/present/frames.html#h-16.3.2
Such warnings could, therefore, be as false and misleading in a
windowing browsing environment as they are meaningless, absurd and
potentially confusing in a windowless browsing environment.
[1] The meaning of the target name "_blank" in HTML4.01 is: "The user
agent should load the designated document in a new, unnamed window."
(http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/types.html#type-frame-target ). Note
the key word "should", which ought to be interpreted according to
RFC2119. The meaning does not use "must", for hopefully obvious reasons.
--
Jock